The Guardian reports that Microsoft is to release a near real time voice translator as Skype Translator by the end of this year. The service will first appear on Windows 8 but is expected to be rolled out to other platforms quickly. In a demo at the Code conference Skype Translator translated English to German and vice versa nearly perfectly. The video below explains how this works.

This Thursday Dr Peter Gutmann, an honorary research associate of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, will give a free public lecture titled: The Psychology of Computer Insecurity. His research is on the design and analysis of cryptographic security architectures and security usability. He helped write the popular PGP encryption package and has authored a number of papers and RFCs on security and encryption. He is the author of the open source cryptlib security toolkit “Cryptographic Security Architecture: Design and Verification” (Springer, 2003), and also has an upcoming book “Engineering Security“. In his spare time he pokes holes in whatever security systems and mechanisms catch his attention and grumbles about the lack of consideration of human factors in designing security systems.Synopsis: A fairly standard response with computer security failures is to blame the user. The real culprit, though, is the way in which the human mind works. Millennia of evolutionary conditioning and the environment in which users operate cause them to act, and react, in predictable ways to given stimuli and situations. This talk looks at the (often surprising) ways in which the human mind deals with computer security issues, and why apparent “bugs in the wetware” are something that not only cannot be patched but are often critical to our functioning as humans.When: 6pm for free refreshments for a 6.30pm start, Thursday 22nd May, 2014Where: Owen G Glenn Building, Room OGGB3/260-092 University of AucklandNote that there is public parking in the basement of the Owen G Glenn Building at 12 Grafton Road.

British Pathé was a producer of newsreels, cinemagazines, and documentaries from 1910 until 1970 in the United Kingdom. Over 90,000 clips are now available online from the Pathé website. So this isn’t a strictly off-topic post. If you enter “computer” as a search term you’ll see a collection of clips dating back as far as 1949 (an electronic machine that plays noughts and crosses). If you have an interest in history I’m sure you’ll find this site fascinating – try using your home town as a search term, you may be surprised by the breadth of Pathé’s coverage.

This Thursday Associate Professor Steven Galbraith, a leading researcher in computational number theory and the mathematics of public key cryptography, will give a free public lecture at the University of Auckland. Steven has published over 50 papers in this area, written one book, and edited three conference proceedings. He has a Bachelors degree from the University of Waikato, a Masters from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, and he completed his PhD at Oxford University in 1996. He has had post-doc or visiting researcher positions at Royal Holloway University of London (UK), British Telecom Research (Ipswich, UK), University of Waterloo (Canada), Institute for Experimental Mathematics (Essen, Germany), University of Bristol (UK) and Hewlett-Packard Research Labs (Bristol, UK). He has been at the University of Auckland since 2009.The lecture titled “Public Key Cryptography: Computation, Cash and John Nash” will explain how security can be enhanced by the use of hard computational problems from Mathematics. This was the basis for the creation of public key cryptography in the 1970s. Public key cryptography has many applications in information security, such as secure internet shopping, digital signatures and secure automatic software updates. We will see how digital signatures have now become a crucial component of the electronic currency bitcoin. Cryptography is, of course, of great interest to national security. Recently (only declassified in 2012) it has been revealed that John Nash (subject of the film A Beautiful Mind) sent a letter to the United States National Security Agency in 1955. His letter outlined new concepts that anticipated by decades fundamental notions in computational complexity and modern cryptography.When: 6pm (free refreshments) for 6.30pm start, Thursday 15th May, 2014Where: Owen G Glenn Building, Room OGGB3/260-092Note that there is public parking in the basement of the Owen G Glenn Building at 12 Grafton Road.

We’re seeing some increasingly creative ideas for using Google Street View and The Guardian has recently shown us another one – Classic album covers in Street View. This features the album cover superimposed over it’s location; from the obvious Beatles’ Abbey Road to more modern covers, this is another creative use of Street View.

This Thursday evening Dr Giovanni Russello of Department of Computer Science of The University of Auckland will give a free public lecture on Security in Mobile DevicesGiovanni Russello is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Auckland. He joined the department in 2012 from CREATE-NET in Trento, Italy, where he was the leader of the Security Group after completing a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Imperial College London. Dr. Russello holds a PhD from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and an MSc from the University of Catania in Italy. His research expertise is in the fast-evolving field of system security for both mobile and cloud platforms. He has authored or co-authored well over 50 research papers and books, and holds four provisional patents. His recent research has concentrated on developing novel security solutions to address vulnerabilities of mobile devices. The fruits of this research have now reached the commercialisation stage. Giovanni is the founder and CEO of Active Mobile Security, a start-up company funded by Uniservices, the university’s commercial arm.When: 6pm for 6.30pm start, Thursday 8th May, 2014Where: Owen G Glenn Building, Room OGGB3/260-092Note that there is public parking in the basement of the Owen G Glenn Building at 12 Grafton Road.

Synopsis: Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have become exceedingly successful computing devices, exceeding personal computers in numbers of sales. Smartphones equipped with the Android operating system represent 82% of this very competitive world wide market. However, Android has become the top target for malicious code because the Android standard security mechanism has unique vulnerabilities. This lecture will discuss the special nature of security with mobile devices. In particular it will discuss problems with the Android security model and local research intended to help solve these issues.